Bond Movies 07 - Die Another Day

by Raymond Benson

  Graves watched the screen with interest. There was now a new edge on the glacier and the drop was nothing but a deadly white chaos of hundreds of tons of shattering ice. It would be impossible for anyone to survive that. He turned to the generals, shut down the brassard and removed the visor.

  ‘Global warming is a terrible thing,’ he said.

  General Li bowed deeply and said in Korean,.‘Forgive me. Colonel.’

  The last of the ice face sank beneath the waves. A vast swell of water rolled away from the glacier wall, engulfing smaller icebergs.

  Rising up over the brow of the wave and skimming over the rushing water, was a tiny figure borne aloft by the remains of the icejet’s brake-parachute. Bond had managed to fashion a kiteboard out of its hatch cover and by sheer determination he was able to ride above the maelstrom. He concentrated hard on holding on to his improvised craft, for the forces of wind and wave were intent on knocking him to oblivion. Caught on the growing wave with icebergs looming up towards him on all sides, Bond steered through the nightmarish obstacle course with great skill, half-surfing, half-flying over the accelerating water. If the stakes hadn’t been so high, it would have been the most exhilarating ride of a lifetime.

  Bond eventually approached an obstacle that was impossible to steer around. Up ahead was the sheer cliff of ice that formed the other end of the lake and the huge wave was propelling him towards it at a tremendous speed. Desperate, he wrenched the ropes attached to the parachute and the board lifted out of the water. The makeshift kiteboard sailed into the air, leading the massive rush of water. The board dropped from his feet, but he dung to the chute and let it carry him over the cliff. He landed neatly on terra firma, just clearing the shower of water that broke over the bank. He dropped, rolled and lay on the ice for a full three minutes before attempting to sit up. His felt his heart beating rapidly, nearly pounding a hole in his chest. His lungs gasped for breath and convulsed with pain as he sucked in the cold air.

  After what seemed an eternity, Bond rose, removed the chute and gazed towards the huge glacier at the other end of the lake and the fresh scar now in its face. Nothing else mattered. Nothing was more important. One single thought turned over and over in his mind.

  He was alive.

  Miranda and Zao approached her suite with several gunmen flanking them. She nodded and Zao opened the door. The sitting room appeared to be empty. All was quiet. Miranda indicated to Zao to go on in. Eagle-eyed, he advanced.

  As soon as he crossed the threshold. Jinx swung down from above and kicked him in the back. She landed like a cat, adopted a fighting posture and then saw Miranda and the armed guards. Jinx straightened, aware that she was outnumbered. Zao recovered quickly and got to his feet.

  ‘Nice moves,’ Miranda said. ‘Just like Bond. He was ... so vigorous last night.’

  ‘He did you? Jinx asked. ‘I didn’t know he was that desperate.’

  Miranda gave her a brittle smile. ‘He won’t be back. He died running, trying to save his own skin.’

  Zao relieved Jinx of her Browning and stepped back with Miranda. They went back into the corridor, leaving Jinx standing in the middle of the room. Zao punched the button to close the door and Miranda added, as an afterthought, ‘Your outfit is beautifully tailored. I hope it doesn’t shrink when it gets wet.’ The door sealed tight once again.

  Zao and Miranda marched out of the palace and met Graves and Vlad in the front. The three Korean generals were in one of two Range Rovers that sat idling on the edge of the car park. Miranda and Vlad joined them and the vehicle drove away.

  Graves spoke to Zao in Korean. ‘I leave the clean-up in your hands. When we meet next, it will be as victors. Keep your men out of the palace.’

  Zao said, ‘Our separation will not be as long as last time.’ The two men hugged and then Graves boarded the second vehicle.

  Bond trudged along in the snow with the parachute wrapped over his shoulders for warmth. It was hard going, especially after the ordeal he had just been through. He would have given anything for some form of transport and would even have been grateful for a cello case to ride on. His muscles were screaming and he felt dehydrated. Nevertheless he pushed on. Colonel Moon, aka Gustav Graves, was clearly on the edge of madness.

  The noise of an engine in the distance caught his attention. Bond scrambled up an icy incline and saw that a ski-mobile was heading his way. He considered the parachute around his body and got an idea. Bond ran back down and set his trap . ..

  Moments later, as the ski-mobile passed a bank of ice the parachute popped up from beneath the snow, pulled taut. The obstacle hit the driver in the face, knocking him off the machine. Bond appeared from behind the bank, leapt neatly onto the vehicle and zoomed off towards the palace.

  Then another loud noise, this time in the sky, alerted Bond to a new danger. A giant Antonov An-124 Condor heavy military transport aircraft swooped overhead. It descended for a landing somewhere in the distance, near his destination. He set his jaw and accelerated, pushing the vehicle to its limit.

  When he arrived on the outskirts of the palace property, Bond avoided being seen by driving behind an outcrop of icy rocks not too far from the building. He dismounted and watched from behind cover. It appeared that all the guests had gone, leaving just Graves’ men. They were preparing to depart as well, working in the car park where the Aston Martin and Jinx’s Thunderbird were stranded. An armed guard stood vigil over the cars.

  Bond removed his keyfob, pressed some buttons and watched. Spikes shot out of the Aston Martin’s tyres and cover plates descended to mask the wheels. The Vanquish then shimmered and pixellated into a ghost of itself, completely disappearing from sight. The engine revved and the car crept away from behind the guard.

  The man turned and was astonished to see that the vehicle was gone. Tracks in the snow indicated that the thing had indeed moved off the car park and around a bend. The confused guard decided to investigate. He followed the tracks around to where they seemed to stop and stood there, rubbing his chin.

  Where was the damned car?

  Suddenly a window opened before him in midair. Bond’s fist shot out, grabbed the guard’s collar and pulled his face down hard on the top of the invisible car. The man slumped to the ground, unconscious and Bond vanished as the window silently rose.

  Bond studied the Vanquish’s dashboard, which was more like the control panel of an aircraft than an automobile. He brought up the ,heat imaging system and focused it on the ice palace. If Jinx was still in there alive, she would show up on the monitor. But nothing was there. Everyone was gone. Had they taken her with them?

  Wait. There was a small orange blob of life deep in the palace, in the area where the large suites were. It had to be her.

  Zao had been spending the last several minutes patrolling the grounds and issuing orders to the remaining guards. When he came around the bend and saw the unconscious man lying in the snow, he raised his walkie-talkie and babbled into it. After a moment, several gunmen on ski-mobiles appeared at his signal. As they awaited further orders, Zao looked around, scanning for the infiltrator. What he saw caused his jaw to drop.

  One of the approaching ski-mobiles suddenly wobbled and warped as if he were seeing it through a distorting lens. Then there was a loud clang as the ski-mobile bounced backwards off of nothing and the rider was catapulted through the air. He crashed down at the unsympathetic Zao’s feet. Staring, Zao ran for a nearby Jaguar XKR.

  Bond activated the communication system and punched in the frequency for London. He impatiently waited for an answer, not wanting to waste any precious minutes.

  Come on! he willed.

  Finally, Moneypenny answered. ‘James, where are you?’ Her voice was filtered and sounded very far away.

  ‘Skating on thin ice. Get M on the line. We’ve got an agent in trouble.’

  ‘Miss Frost?’

  ‘Someone else. But Miss Frost is in very big trouble. ’

  The Antonov landed on an ice
field a few miles from the palace. Graves and his entourage were waiting for it in the Range Rovers. After the massive plane came to a halt, the ramp descended and the passengers prepared to board.

  Graves opened the case and removed the brassard and visor.

  ‘Time to give the American her bath,’ Miranda said. She grinned and followed the generals into the aircraft. Vlad stayed behind to assist his boss.

  The gauntlet hummed and whirred as Graves manipulated the Icarus satellite into position. Once again, the sail unfolded and caught the sun’s rays, this time directing them at the Ice Palace.

  Leaving the satellite in place, Graves shut off the brassard and put it back in the case.

  ‘Let’s get aboard, Vlad,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’ll handle take-off.’

  Zao leapt inside the XKR and fired it up.

  So the British spy has a few extras in his fancy Aston Martin? he thought. Wait until he gets a taste of Moon’s Jaguar ... !

  Indeed, the XKR was a formidable machine with a 370-horsepower supercharged AJ-V8 engine that could match the Vanquish in acceleration from o to 60 miles per hour in five seconds. The energy> absorbing front and rear crumple zones and wraparound bumpers gave it extra protection from those little mishaps that invariably occurr when one is chasing enemy spies. Zao had no doubt that Moon’s offensive and defensive additions to the car would give MI6’s Q Branch a run for its money.

  He brought up the thermal imaging system and the Aston Martin suddenly materialised ahead. Zao flicked a switch and a rocket fired from the Jaguar.

  Bond, seeing the warning panel flash with the message ‘TARGETED’, threw the Vanquish into reverse and hit the accelerator. The rocket missed the car by a hair’s breadth and exploded into an iceberg a few feet behind where it had been. Bond felt the concussion caused by the blast but car’s solid armour of the vehicle protected him and it from harm.

  Time to go and rescue Jinx.

  The Aston Martin sped away towards the palace in a blur of tyre tracks and churning ice, but Zao wasn’t about to let Bond get away so easily. At his command, machine guns protruded from the flanks of the car and began to fire. Bullets spewed and damaged patches of pixels on the Vanquish’s skin.

  Bond pressed a button and an armoured shield sprag up from the rear. Zao’s bullets bounced off in an explosive roar. Bond hit another switch and fired back at the Jaguar with Tiis rear-fender guns. Apparently the Koreans had access to cobalt armour as well, for Bond’s bullets ricocheted off the Jag.

  Both cars thundered along, shifting gears and positions. Zao continued to shoot at the Vanquish, chipping off more pixels and uncloaking more and more of it. Bond finally turned off the cloaking mechanism and concentrated on avoiding the Jaguar. The goal was to get to the palace but the Korean was cleverly making that task difficult with the Jag’s weapons and by swerving in front of Bond when he could. Whenever Bond got a clean line of traversal to the palace, the Jag blocked him, pushing him further out into the ice fields. Eventually Zao pushed Bond towards a large glacier. It would take a dangerous manoeuvre to avoid hitting it, so Bond had to opt for the unorthodox method. He fired a torpedo at the glacier and blew a tunnel through it. He hurtled through and came roaring out of the other side. Unfortunately, Zao was right behind him. The Jag ploughed through the falling ice chunks, cleared the glacier and decreased the distance between the two cars.

  Zao’s next ploy was to fire a heat-seeking rocket. The Vanquish’s warning system alerted Bond just in time and he managed to swerve out of the way. The rocket exploded against a snow bank but the force was powerful enough to throw the Aston Martin over onto its roof with a crash. The car skidded along the ice as Bond hung by his seatbelt upside down, helpless it. Once the Vanquish came to a halt, Zao fired another heat-seeker at the target, which was now as vulnerable as a turtle on its back.

  The warning system flashed again. Bond cursed aloud and then did the first thing that came to him - he hit the Passenger Eject button. In a fraction of a second the roof panel slid back and the seat slammed the ice, pivoting the car upwards and over - just in time for the rocket to whiz beneath it. The car then slapped down onto all four wheels.

  Bond was back in business, if now lacking a passenger seat He flattened the accelerator, turned the wheel hard and smashed into the Jag, knocking it into a snowdrift. The Jag’s wheels spun helplessly, sending up a tremendous spray of ice. Zao was trapped.

  Bond prepared a torpedo, gripped the joystick and placed his thumb on the trigger. Then he saw something bright out the comer of his eye, turned to look and was horrified at what he saw.

  The Icarus beam was covering the Ice Palace. The palace appeared to be sinking in a moat of frozen slush and the outer edges of the structure were beginning to crack. Flakes of snow swirled into the air, evaporating on the way.

  Bond forgot about Zao, turned the car around and gunned the engine.

  17 - That Sinking Feeling

  Jinx had tried everything she could think of to escape from the locked suite. The icy windows were sealed tight and only a blowtorch could loosen the frozen frames. The door was a solid block of ice that a sledgehammer might smash to pieces, but unfortunately she was short one of those. If they hadn’t taken her gun, she could have shot holes in the door but even that probably wouldn’t have done much good.

  What had they meant about Bond? Was he really dead? Jinx didn’t believe it. She didn’t want to believe it. They seemed so sure, though. Jinx had done her research on Bond since the escapade in Cuba. She had learned a great deal about him and how dangerous he was. He was a formidable ally and had apparently come out of worse scrapes than this during his long career. Still ... the Frost woman had seemed so confident. If Bond’s death was a foregone conclusion, then Jinx had to do a better job at finding a way out of that room.

  The sound of a muffled explosion outside brought her to the window. All she could see was a billow of dark smoke coming from somewhere out of her line of sight. One of Graves’ Jaguars was speeding along the ice, as if it was chasing something. Once it was out of view, she turned back to the room and challenged herself to find an escape route.

  The heating and ventilation grille was built into the ice above the bed but the opening was much too small for her to fit through. She moved the bed away from the wall, knocked over the desk and explored every inch of the bathroom. There were no openings anywhere that could possibly be exploited.

  What was she going to do?

  Just then a bright light shone outside the window. She went back to look out but was blinded by the intensity of the beam. Jinx was gripped by terror as she realised what the light was from. She backed away from the window and stood in the middle of the room, now desperate for some sort of salvation. As she scanned the room again, a drop of water fell on her forehead.

  The ceiling was melting.

  Then Jinx felt the floor lunge, as if something had impacted the building’s foundation. Water began to seep out along the edges where the floor met the walls. She thought that either the Ice Palace was sinking or they were experiencing an earthquake. A series of loud pinging noises signalled that the ice was giving at the edges of the heavy structure. Terrified to the point of indecision, Jinx simply sat on the bed and stared at the icy room as the walls began to glow white and sweat. The drips increased in size and frequency until it seemed as if the place had massive leaks all over the ceiling.

  James, if you’re alive, you had better get here fast, was the last thought she had before starting to pray.

  James Bond was driving directly for the Ice Palace when the entrance slumped and crashed down, sealing off any hope of getting inside. He had to swerve and skid across the wet ice to avoid crashing. With Zao still in pursuit, Bond turned the Aston Martin and drove around the palace structure to the tunnel, only to find that it, too, had collapsed. There was no way in or out.

  Bond turned around again and sped through the car park. He felt the ground lurch violently as cracks snaked across the lake f
loor where it met the walls of the Ice Palace. With an awful groan, the entire building began to cave in on itself.

  As Bond reversed directions again, Zao fired another rocket at the Aston Martin. It exploded just behind the car, but the force was powerful enough to lift the Vanquish into the air. The car crashed down in front of two Ski-Doos, clipped one and hit the other hard, knocking it forward and smashing it into the sinking palace.

  Bond couldn’t believe the good fortune that the explosion had wrought. The ski-mobile had broken through a collapsing wall and created a hole large enough to drive through. Bond threw the car into gear and drove into the palace, lumbering over chunks of ice. Zao also seized the opportunity and followed Bond in, with a Ski-Doo right behind him.

  Bond found himself in the bar area. He shot around it, smashing into one of the balcony’s supporting pillars. The ski-mobile driver stopped, pulled out a rocket launcher and prepared for the Aston Martin to come around the bar again. As he was about to fire, Bond’s car clipped another pillar and most of the balcony collapsed. The driver jumped away to protect himself from the falling ice but in doing so he moved directly in front of the Vanquish, which smashed into him With a deadly thump.

  Bond drove out of the bar and up the staircase, where water was cascading all around. Beams were falling left and right. Even with the spikes the wheels slipped and slid, working hard to get a grip on the wet steps. The whole place was tilting at a crazy angle. Bond gunned the engine and the Vanquish miraculously gained some traction. It shot up the stairs, followed by the Jaguar.

  The two cars zoomed around the curved corridor, one after the other. When he came to an intersection, Bond turned and skidded around the comer. The manoeuvre was successful in losing the Jaguar for the moment, so he took the time to look for Jinx again. He stopped the car at a balcony and engaged the radial thermal imaging system. There was a faint trace of body heat somewhere to his right and down a level. Bond saw that the corridor in question led to the area where Miranda’s room had been. Jinx must be there.